Israelis and Arabs during the Cold War?

Question

What role did the Israelis and Arabs in general play during the Cold War?

Answer 1

They were fighting with each other; 1948, 1956, 1967 (6 Day War) and 1973 (Yom Kippur War).

The Cold War did, however, affect the Middle East:

In the 1950s, both east and west offered aid to Egypt to build the Aswan High Dam on the Nile River. The west canceled its offer, however, after Egypt bought weapons from the communist government of Czechoslovakia. Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser then seized control of the company that operated the Suez Canal. A few months later, Israel invaded Egypt. France and Britain joined the invasion. For once, the United States and the Soviet Union agreed on a major issue. Both supported a United Nations resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire. The Suez Crisis was a political victory for the Soviets. When the Soviet Union supported Egypt, it gained new friends in the arab world.

Answer 2

During the Cold War, the global strategic battle between the Soviet Union and the United States carried over into the region. This rivalry constantly molded the regional conflict structure, establishing a link between the extra-regional and the regional level (Kimche 1996, Garfinkle 1996).
After the Suez-crisis, the Palestinian national struggle, that was an important symbol and unifying force among the Arabs, became the nucleus of the Cold War politics in the Middle East. The Arab and Israeli leaders exploited the situation to their own advantage, establishing a link between the extra-regional and the regional level of conflict. Thus, during the Cold War years, peace-making efforts in the Middle East became hostage to Cold War considerations (Avineri 1993). The rationale for this deadlock disappeared with the Cold War, and the division of the Middle East in Eastern and Western spheres of influence vanished.

Due to the domestic political and economic upheavals, the Soviet Union gradually withdrew from the region between 1986 and 1989 (Bruner 1990). The United States no longer had any superpower rival to contain, and the American influence in the Middle East increased considerably (Fermann 1994a, Flamhaft 1996). [3
http://www.smi.uib.no/pao/brobakk.html


Here you have some sites that explain the circumstances:

http://www.bc.edu/research/cjl/meta-elements/texts/cjrelations/resources/education/Israel_Palestine/cold_war.htm
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/REVhistoryCOLD3.htm

Answer 3

They played very different roles.
With millions of Jewish people on both sides of the Iron Curtain, Israel had tremendous resources for espionage and intelligence gathering. The Israeli government had a legitimate interest in the immigration of millions of Jews from the Eastern Bloc. They also had strong cultural ties with the West, particularly countries like the U.S. and U.K. that had large Jewish populations.
The Arabs had more of an economic influence with countries bordering on the U.S.S.R. as well as oil and other strategic resources sought by the Cold Warriors.